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16/04/2024. Foreign/Own: ”The Sun of Russian Poetry” in translations into the Karelian and other languages
April 16, 2024:
Participants in the Foreign/Own project read and discussed translations into Karelian of works by Alexander Pushkin. In the year of the 225th anniversary of ”The Sun of Russian Poetry”, the final program of the season was dedicated to translation of poet’s works into different languages.
The participants learned that the prefaces of the first collections of translations by A. Pushkin into French expressed the idea that the poet’s poems are untranslatable. However, since then, writers, translators, and people fascinated by works of the great Russian poet have tried to create translations into their native languages. But is this possible? Listeners of the program learned about a paradox: translations exist and they are “impossible” – sometimes even according to the translators themselves.
During the second part of the program, participants, who have been regularly practicing translating from Russian into Karelian, discussed existing translations existing translations of Pushkin's works into this language. Among the translations available at the National Library of Karelia, there are The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin, The Song of Wise Oleg, The Captain’s Daughter and different poems by Pushkin.
After reading the texts in Karelian, the project participants noted that conveying the uniqueness of Pushkin’s language is difficult. The participants also practiced translating from Russian into Karelian and prepared their own translation of a fragment of the story The Aristocratic Peasant Girl from the Belkin’s Tales by Pushkin.
Besides, in the National Library of Karelia, readers will find Pushkin's works translated into English, Finnish, Italian, French and other languages. Including an amazing publication of the translation of the poem I Remember a Wonderful Moment into 210 languages of the world, prepared by the Arkhangelsk Literary Museum. This and other publications are presented in the electronic catalog.
In 2019, under the initiative of the National Library of Karelia, on the portal Finno-Ugric Libraries of Russia was published a literary video fleshmob, dedicated to one of the most famous poems by Pushkin, I Remember a Wonderful Moment
The publication was made to the 220th anniversary of Pushkin.
The idea to hold a video flashmob was given by a collection containing translations of this poem into 210 languages; the collection appeared in 2015 thanks to the selfless work of the Arkhangelsk Literary Museum and its director Boris Yegorov.